Remembrance
by greieve
Summary: The Master is stuck in limbo, and he has time to reflect on some of his last years. Takes place after 'Last of the Time Lords'. Spoilers.


The Master gasps, eyes flying open, as he gathers his wits about him. Looking around—if you could call it _looking_—all he could see was, well, nothing. Everything was just—dark. Black as pitch.

In fact, the Master can't even tell if his eyes are actually _open_. He doesn't know whether he's sitting or standing, clothed or otherwise. Hell, he doesn't even know if he's alive; not being able to tell if his lungs are expanding and contracting to take oxygen into his bloodstream. Upon sitting—or whatever it is he's doing—in the silence, the Master begins to realize that his hearts aren't even beating at all.

What he thought was the four-beat rhythm of his hearts pumping blood through his body, he realizes, is, in fact, the sound of drums.

Oh, damn those drums. Even in his seemingly deceased state do the drums continue to haunt him, pounding away at his pressured mind, which, as he now presumes, is dead along with the rest of him. How can this be? The Master opens his mouth to scream, but he is instantly filled with a thick, chocking _darkness_, preventing him from uttering a sound save the inward groan which rumbles through his body.

Suddenly he stops, squeezing his eyes in what he presumes to be shut, and thinks. How did he get here? Almost painfully, the Master tries to recall the memories—the events—leading up to this place.

Because can barely remember even who he is, the Master—that's his name, he knows—brings up the most lucid word he can conjure. And that word just happens to be _Valiant_.

Bits and pieces begin to rush back to him, flow into his somehow still active mind. _Valiant_. The ship—his ship. His hovercraft. Yes, he remembers now. The vessel he had drifting through Earth's atmosphere, as he watched with cruel delight the suffering that took place on the rock below, all by his hand.

_Lucy_. His wife—well, the Prime Minister's wife. _Harold Saxon_. That was his name, the name he took on as a "human". Engulfing the filthy planet Earth in a shadowy reign that was under his command. Oh, how much he'd worked in so little time to achieve such a brilliant goal as this. Lord and Master of all disgusting human apes that resigned on _his_ planet.

_Doctor_. The Doctor. His pet, his favorite toy and past-time. The Doctor. So mistreated and ill-used, he remembered those nights when he would take up the withered old husk of a body, and, reversing the Lazarus technology on his laser screwdriver, would make the Doctor young again.

Oh, how he would make his enemy moan and cry out with each gentle caress, followed by a harsh backhand and sore, reddened—and often bruised—skin. He loved the broken and defeated look on his Doctor's face when he thrust into him, drawing out a sickening scream followed afterward by the sobs of a shattered mind and body. Crumpled, destroyed, curled up on the cold floor of the Valiant, the Doctor's body would fast-forward a hundred years in a mere five seconds, writhing and screaming as his body was pulled so unnaturally through the Time Vortex.

And how he also loved the Doctor's pained and helpless expression as he made his pet watch the many torturous rampages on innocents. The freak _Jack_, killed so many times that he had long lost count. Murdering him so brutally and fashionably, in any way the Master could _dream_ of. Observing the excruciating process as his freak body grew back chunks of flesh, mended broken bone, and brought life once more into the impossible man.

_The Joneses_. His servants on the Valiant. They were yet another bearer of his harsh deeds and attacks, making the Doctor watch in silence as his companion's family were hurt and ridiculed. His companion…

_Martha_. The girl who escaped the Master's hold when she slipped away at the beginning of that wonderful year. The girl who traveled around the Earth, spreading information throughout the dwindling population.

_The Archangel Network_. The Doctor's name, spread throughout the surface of the Earth, was slowly woven into the Archangel Network, undetected by his own ignorance and stupidity. That one word, _Doctor_—that one single thought connecting the network and freeing his pet from his hold. Restoring the Doctor to his usual form, and defeating him with the newfound artron energy. The Doctor wanted to keep him then, offering the most repulsive gift the Master could think of—forgiveness.

_Lucy_. Lucy again. His poor, poor, broken Lucy. She shot him—she saved him. Saved him from becoming forever imprisoned in the Doctor's TARDIS.

_Regeneration_. But no, he hadn't regenerated. Lying on the ground, dying in the Doctor's arms, smirking up at the pleading face that wanted him so badly to save himself.

And then, _darkness_. Here he was—the Master, ruler of Earth—left to go mad in the place without light. Without life. Even in death he could not escape the drums that tormented him since the age of eight. Driving him mad with anger and retaliation. No more—please—no more. _Make it stop! _He wanted to scream into the suffocating blackness that now surrounded his consciousness.

In desperation, the Master recoiled into himself, going back through all his nine-hundred years in an instant, trying so frantically to rid himself of the _noise_ in his head…

When would his eternal suffering end?

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><p><strong>AN: I was originally planning on continuing this story, but I'm having trouble deciding what to write about. Ideas would be appreciated.**


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